November 1st. Early Decision. Application Deadlines.

November 1st. Early Decision. Application Deadlines. These two-word phrases can strike terror in the hearts of even the most experienced college counselors.

If you woke up November 1st feeling somewhat exhausted, there’s good reason. With the November 1st Early Decision/Early Action deadlines looming, schools using Naviance eDocs were extra busy on October 31st. On that day alone, over 877,000 transcripts, written evaluations, letters of recommendation, school profiles, and more were submitted via Naviance eDocs. That represents a 54% increase over the number of documents submitted on the same day in 2013. And, as of October 31st, year-to-date Naviance eDocs submissions were up 33%.

We also checked in with the Common Application to ask about their experience with the first major application deadline. Our partnership with the Common Application allows school staff to consolidate systems and send supporting documents to Common Application destinations through Naviance eDocs. Aba Blankson replied that, “In the days and hours leading up to the November 1st deadline, over 200,000 applications and 600,000 recommendations were smoothly submitted through the Common App system.” The Common App blog states that, between 11:30 pm and midnight on October 31st, their system saw almost “400 application submissions per minute.”

Although there are still some key application deadlines in the next four to six weeks, many school counselors are now beginning to focus on Midyear Reports. The introduction of the Multiple Transcript Manager should make this process much faster for school users and result in a smoother application season overall. We hope that this enhancement will allow counselors to spend more time working with their students to help them solidify their post-secondary plans.